E-book $10.00 to $26.00About E-booksISBN: 9780226041834
Published
September 2000

How to Do It shows us sixteenth-century Italy from an entirely new perspective: through manuals which were staples in the households of middlebrow Italians merely trying to lead better lives. Addressing challenges such as how to conceive a boy, the manuals offered suggestions such as tying a tourniquet around your husband's left testicle. Or should you want to goad female desires, throw 90 grubs in a liter of olive oil, let steep in the sun for a week and apply liberally on the male anatomy. Bell's journey through booklets long dismissed by scholars as being of little literary value gives us a refreshing and surprisingly fun social history.

"Lively and curious reading, particularly in its cascade of anecdote, offered in a breezy, cozy, journalistic style." —Lauro Martines, Times Literary Supplement

"[Bell's] fascinating book is a window on a lost world far nearer to our own than we might imagine. . . . How pleasant to read his delightful, informative and often hilarious book." —Kate Saunders, The Independent

"An extraordinary work which blends the learned with the frankly bizarre." —The Economist

"Professor Bell has a sly sense of humor and an enviably strong stomach. . . . He wants to know how people actually behaved, not how the Church or philosophers or earnest humanists thought they should behave. I loved this book." —Christopher Stace, Daily Telegraph

List of IllustrationsAcknowledgments1. Readers2. ConceptionBoy or GirlFrequency of IntercoursePositions during IntercourseSettingMale ImpotenceInfertility in WomenMenstruationAre You Pregnant?3. Pregnancy and ChildbirthBoy or Girl?Maybe Twins?Due DateMiscarriageDiet and Daily ActivityMidwivesAnatomyLaborPostpartum Care4. Raising Your ChildNursing: Who Should Do It?Nursing: How to Do ItChild Rearing: Physical HealthChild Rearing: Good CharacterChildren's Books5. AdolescenceWho Was an Adolescent?The Sins of AdolescenceMaking FunChoosing a Spouse6. Marital RelationsFrom the HumanistsFrom the ChurchFrom the GentlemenWidows7. Then and NowFemale AuthorshipThe InternetNotesIndex

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